Terror on ice The Terror

The Ridley Scott-produced series about the mysterious fate of a Naval expedition to find the Northwest Passage is an enjoyable blend of fact and fiction that can’t quite maintain its icy grip

Dir Edward Drake, US 2020 On digital platforms

I doubt there are many forteans who haven’t heard of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus or their ill-fated expedition in 1845 to confirm and navigate the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. On the off chance, though: simply put, the ships never came back and indeed were never found (until recently; see FT376:4), with no indication of what happened to the men on board. It’s a maritime mystery to rival the Mary Celeste.

In 2007 American author Dan Simmons wrote a doorstopper novel about the expedition, speculating as to what became of the crew, incorporating elements from horror, mysticism, and Inuit mythology. I must confess that I started reading it but, bogged down by too much detail and a certain diffuseness, I gave up; it started brilliantly but gradually became less and less interesting.

To a certain extent that is also true of this television adaptation of Simmons’s novel. The first few episodes (of 10), essentially those set on board the ships, are terrific. The basic plot sees Captain Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Harris, at his most lugubrious) order both ships to proceed through the ice despite the onset of winter,

The men are being stalked by what they take to be a giant polar bear

ignoring the advice of his secondin-command Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris). Inevitably, they get trapped, frozen into the pack ice. Although supplies are plentiful, there are concerns that the canned goods they rely on have become contaminated; the crew become resentful and cliques begin to form. The worst problem by far, though, is that the men are being stalked by what they take to be a giant polar bear. Deaths ensue. During a recce, an Inuit man is accidentally shot and killed; his daughter (Nive Nielsen) – whom the crew dub Lady Silence – is taken on board for questioning and it transpires her father was a shaman, with some control over the beast. With his death, the creature becomes more and more aggressive.

This is all great stuff: tense, claustrophobic, brutal and with a growing sense of utter dread. The minutiæ of life aboard a 19th century naval vessel are depicted well: the drudgery, the snobbery, the petty arguments, the casual violence. There are subplots galore, so there’s always plenty going on: will the food drive the men insane? Will they mutiny? Will a homosexual relationship be revealed? Will Lady Silence fall victim to the increasingly fractious crew? The period detail is good and – despite some dreadfully fake scenes on the ice – it is immersive and convincing.

The problems begin when the decision is made to abandon ship and establish a camp on the solid ground of King William Island. It’s at this point, and in subsequent episodes, that the crew splinter off into different groups, all of which appear to wander off in different directions, to the extent that it’s difficult to keep track of who is where. Most of the cast, apart from the principals, are played by actors unknown to me, and with lots of small roles I had trouble telling them apart.

The story becomes more concerned with how the men are going to survive long enough to reach civilisation and the stuff about the giant, man-eating polar bear is rather forgotten. When it is eventually seen close up, it’s pretty unconvincing, and you wonder why so little imagination went into its digital design. The belated attempt to ‘explain’ the creature by linking it with Inuit culture and mythology is never properly explored.

Having said all that, The Terror is still very watchable and there is much to enjoy. The transformation of Crozier’s antagonistic attitude towards the haughty Commander James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) into one of genuine friendship, borne out of human solidarity in the face of death, is great, for instance. Jared Harris is superb, as he always seems to be, and special mention must go to Adam Nagaitis as Hickey, the malevolent and scheming caulker’s mate.

This isn’t for the faint-hearted. I wouldn’t say that it’s terrifying, but it is gruesome and contains scenes which are consistent not just with the harsh necessities of survival but also with some of the archæological evidence found decades later. Exactly what happened remains a mystery but, in the absence of an explanation, The Terror will do quite nicely.

Daniel King

★★★ ★★

Battle Royale

Dir Kinji Fukasaku, Japan 2000 Arrow Video, 4K UHD Blu-ray, £79.99

21 years since its release, director Kinji Fukasaku’s treatise on the dynamics of power has lost none of its strength or watchability. Adapted from the novel by Koushun Takami, the plot is simple: Japanese society is on the brink of collapse, facing mass unemployment and disaffection in its youth. Students are abandoning schools, and casual violence is inflicted on the harried teachers. A law is passed, with the anodyne title of the ‘Millennium Educational Reform Act’, also known as the Battle Royale Act, which sees a class of school children sent to an island and forced to kill each other until only one remains.

In essence, the film is Lord of the Flies with ultraviolence. Students are given a pack containing a weapon, ranging from grenades to saucepan lids, and Fukasaku revels in showing the students getting despatched in a variety of bloody ways. It is gory and it is brutal, but also surprisingly funny and incredibly touching. While the characterisation comes in broad strokes, you immediately feel attached to these kids, and root for them. The main characters, Shuya and Noriko, are both sweet and idealistic, unwilling to get involved in the killing and desperately hoping to convince their fellow students to work together. More fun to watch are

those who are immediately playing to win, or quickly learn that it’s every man for himself. Masanobu And is wonderfully scary as Kazuo Kiriyama, an outsider who has signed up for fun: a ginger sprite who leaps around gleefully machine-gunning the other students. Better still is Mitsuko Souma, a class outcast who quickly becomes one of the deadliest players in the game. Ko Shibasaki plays Mitsuko with a devilish grin and an animal ferocity, but you still manage to feel sorry for her when she eventually gets her comeuppance.

Aside from the students, the other key character is Kitano, their former teacher who serves as games master. Played by the legendary ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, he is an enigmatic presence. While he rather callously kills off some students himself, and enjoys his regular announcements letting the kids know which of their peers have been killed, he is certainly not an outright villain. Rather, he’s a man who has been pushed to the limit and is using the draconian laws of the country to restore some kind of order. His relationship with his daughter, one of seeming complete incomprehension, crystallises the lack of communication which underlies the whole situation.

With the opening of the film showing the mediatised finale of a previous event, Battle Royale also touches presciently on the evermore extreme content of reality TV, in a way that would go on to be explored in films like Series 7: The Contenders and My Little Eye, and has a lineage stretching back to Nigel Kneale’s TheYear of the Sex Olympics. It remains a classic.

This set also includes the pointless special edition, which fleshes out certain characters and adds a cheesy wraparound, and the fairly dreadful 2003 sequel

Battle Royale: Requiem. Where the first film remains fresh and zingy,

Requiem felt tired on its release and time has not been kind to it. Battle Royale understood the need to match its philosophical core with splashy popcorn thrills, while Requiem just feels preachy. If you’re a glutton for punishment, there is an extended version too. Martin Parsons

★★★★★